


no hand on the reign

by Wildehack (tyleet)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Typical Violence, M/M, Suicidal Ideation, dark as shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-08-10 00:07:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20126098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tyleet/pseuds/Wildehack
Summary: "How do I stop being the Archivist?" Jon whispers.





	no hand on the reign

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Hozier's "No Plan," which in its aching nihilism is very much a Jon song to me.

It’s a stupid idea, but since the alternatives are rapidly narrowing to “wait for something to get lucky and kill me,” Jon decides to try Knowing again. What’s the worst that could happen? The most likely scenario is that he wakes up on the floor with another horrific migraine. He supposes he could send himself straight into another coma, and maybe that’s the best-case scenario for the world at large, so.   
  
Jon turns on the tape recorder, and closes his eyes.   
  
“How do I stop being the Archivist?” he whispers, and_ focuses_ on it. He imagines someone sitting next to him who he might compel, someone to slake the goddamn hunger, and then imagines them fleeing him–-and _following_. He narrows all the intensity of his Eyes on the question, mercilessly sending the searchlight of his Gaze into the world to find the answers he Seeks, to scour the minds of anyone who might know, any hint, the merest whisper, and drag the answers out of them and into himself–-  
  
–-and the world whites out. It’s not pleasurable like an orgasm, but it contains the same existential pause, the same fleeting moment of nothingness that Jon has felt before gritting his teeth and jerking into his own hand, only it isn’t brief. He loses himself in the white-hot emptiness of Knowing, and he has no idea how long it lasts.   
  
When it’s over, he’s no longer sitting at his desk in the Archives. He doesn’t know where he is–-it’s a room he’s never seen before–but he recognizes the sigh from somewhere above him, familiar and fond.   
  
“Are you satisfied?” Elias asks, and fits his hand to Jon’s occipital notch.   
  
Jon takes a shuddering breath in, and tries desperately to take stock of himself. He’s on his knees-–half-collapsed, really, next to a cot. His head is in Elias’s lap, and Elias is softly stroking his hair; he’s been doing that for a while. It feels-–it’s good.   
  
“I,” Jon says, and realizes his face is wet. He scrubs at it, checks the color. Ah. Not blood, then. “I don’t-–I don’t remember-–?”  
  
“You asked a question,” Elias reminds him. “Did you find the answer?”   
  
Jon blinks, and then–-  
  
Jon Knows.   
  
He thinks he might have already known, in the usual way of things, but now the fact of it settles into him like a key turning in a lock, the tumblers catching and clicking him into place. He is the Archivist. There’s no way to stop being what he is.   
  
Even if the Watcher’s Crown fails–and Jon realizes, abruptly, that of course that’s what they’ve been working towards, he and Elias, for years-–since before Jon was transferred down to the Archives, without ever realizing–-even then, Jon will still be this. He will still need what the Archivist needs; he will require what the Eye requires. The only way out is death, and what can kill him now?   
  
Jon lets out a dry sob, and Elias kisses his temple.   
  
“You’re mine, I’m afraid,” he says calmly, and Jon squeezes his eyes shut, his hands convulsively gripping at the fabric of Elias’s jumpsuit, utterly miserable. “The way my hand or my rib belongs to me.”   
  
He smooths his thumb along the pulse in Jon’s throat. “There is some good news, though.”   
  
“Gonna share with the class?” Jon croaks when he can manage it, turning his head into Elias’s knee. From this vantage point he can see Elias’s ankle, bared by the ill fit of his prison jumpsuit. It’s pale, bony. A vein that might be going varicose runs along the top of his foot, disappearing into a thin slipper. It’s terribly human.   
  
Elias hums. He traces the shell of Jon’s exposed ear with his free hand. “Well,” he says. “I am also yours.”   
  
There’s a long pause, and then Jon startles himself by laughing, hoarse but genuine, great heaves of it making him shake against Elias’s legs. After a while Elias laughs with him.   
  
“All right,” Elias says when their laughter finally subsides. He pats the cot next to him, brisk. “Tell me about the Dark Sun.”   
  
Slowly, with a painful effort, Jon gets up to his feet. He wonders how long he’s been kneeling, then wonders how he got here in the first place, how many hours it has been since he sat in his office and Asked himself something he already knew. He settles onto the cot beside Elias, and declines Elias’s wordless offer to share the thin blanket with a shake of his hand. “I assumed you’d already know.”   
  
Elias smiles. “I do. But tell me how it felt.”   
  
They aren’t touching any longer, but the silence between them is-–dangerously comfortable. It-–Jon likes it. He’s too tired to feel anything else, or to make himself question it, although he knows he really, really should. It feels nice.   
  
He clears his throat. “It was, uh. Beautiful,” he admits.   
  
“Beautiful how?” Elias asks, low and interested.   
  
Jon tells him how, and tells him more than that. They talk for a long time, about the things Jon can’t tell anyone else, the things too disturbing but not–drastic enough–-for anyone else’s attention. It’s Archive business. Things that only matter, Jon realizes, to the two of them.   
  
“You should be going,” Elias says after a while, regretful. “It’s a long drive back to your flat.”   
  
“Yes,” Jon says vaguely. “Yes, I-–I’m not sure how I got here.”   
  
“I have every confidence in your ability to navigate yourself home,” Elias says with light irony, and Jon rolls his eyes and stands up. His legs only tremble slightly.   
  
He nods to the guard who has been waiting, still and unblinking, outside Elias's cell, for the last however many hours. Jon doesn't know which of them caught him, but his the whites of his eyes are cherry red with popped blood vessels, and his face is slick with tears. The man jerks to his feet and keys in the code that will open the door.   
  
“Until next time,” Elias says, looking up at Jon with clear eyes, and Jon-–is abruptly, horrifically grateful for him. For the simple fact of his _existence_, let alone what he is to Jon. He tries not to let it show, but Elias’s smile widens anyway.   
  
Jon leaves the prison, and it’s not until he’s in the car headed to the motorway that he recognizes the black humor of it: isn’t this the night he realized he’s trapped for good? Locked in the prison of himself until he dies?   
  
I should crash the car, he thinks, distant. I should drive straight into a telephone pole.   
  
Instead he drives back to his flat, and makes himself drink some water. He brushes his teeth, he washes his face, he looks around the empty rooms and thinks that he should visit an animal shelter after all. Get a cat. It’s a relief, he decides, knowing that there’s no escape. He’s relieved.   
  
He gets into bed, and he sleeps better than he has in months. 


End file.
